Top digital marketing agencies will be aware of how Google uses “engagement metrics” to rank websites. The best SEO consultants know, its therefore not just about building links, writing guides and applying on-page SEO.
It’s also about monitoring how real visitors interact with the page. The best agencies the world what they do is they monitor engagement on a page, for example asking important questions, such as what’s the dwell time for that page?

Top digital marketing agencies will be aware of how Google uses “engagement metrics” to rank websites. The best SEO consultants know, its therefore not just about building links, writing guides and applying on-page SEO.

It’s also about monitoring how real visitors interact with the page. The best agencies the world what they do is they monitor engagement on a page, for example asking important questions, such as what’s the dwell time for that page?

How many pages is the average shopper visiting, and how do we increase that number even further?

Therefore, its not just about gaining say another thousand visitors every month, it’s about converting more the visitors that you have. It could be clear as day for example, that by redesigning the product descriptions the dwell times becomes higher.

For example, rather than a large block of text, the company might use split testing, to see that bullet points yield greater sales. Therefore, the top brands in the world, you can bet that they invest heavily in CRO.

However, CRO is not just for large brand with multi-million-pound budgets. No, it’s also for SME businesses, as sometimes changes to the websites design improves the SEO but also the number of sales that the company is obtaining.

Here’s the thing, CRO is not an exact science.

It’s different for every type of business.

For example, it could be something as simple as making the text easier to read, that could increase the dwell time for some businesses.

For others, it could be that the page is content-thin; therefore, simply adding more detailed product descriptions could lower the bounce rate.

For another website, let’s say an e-commerce website, through A/B testing it could be found that the main menu change could improve sales. For example, the web designers, working with the SEO team, could find that by simply changing the design of the main menu, could yield more sales.

This is why CRO is not an exact science, you often need highly experienced consultants to work out what to change. Sometimes this is guided by marketing tools, such as Google Analytics.

However, sometimes just by a highly experienced marketing consultant spending some time conducting an audit, they find where the weaker pages are and how to adapt them. For example, there be say 100 articles, which are content thin, dragging down the Google EEAT score for the whole of the website.

Therefore, sometimes by changing the weaker pages, by adding better advice, this can raise the organic rankings across the board.

It’s important therefore to hire an agency which seeks to strengthen many areas of your companies search engine optimisation. For example, there are over 200 ranking factors which need to be strengthened and improved. However, at the same time, there needs to be constant monitoring of bounce rates, dwell times and also how many pages are being visited.

Crucial to all of this is improving the EEAT score of each page.

When you for example, show on each page that you have clear expertise and experience of what you’re writing about, this will engage the reader or visitor more.

This then lends itself to higher dwell times, which will help improve sales.

CRO and SEO therefore need to work hand in glove, this means, that the two need to come together to visit bring more visitors to site. However, no agency should ever lose sight of what’s happening to those visitors once they land on your website. You need to ask therefore, are they leaving in a matter of few seconds? Are they staying for a long time? How many product pages are they visiting? How do we up the engagement, so that shoppers spend longer on the site, which can help to improve sales.

It’s perfectly possible to bring in 10,000 organic visitors per month and not generate a single sale. This sometimes happens when the content marketing is talking about something vaguely relevant to that business, yet doesn’t have the ability to convert into a paying customer.

Imagine, for example, a law practice talking about a high-profile celebrity divorce. This could yield tens of thousands of visitors per month, which sounds great, but that doesn’t mean any are going to use the family lawyers’ services.

Therefore, this is where targeted content marketing, which goes after queries which are likely to bring in additional revenue matters. For example, your team will know the sorts of questions customers ask.

Now, if you answer these questions, right at the start of the buying process, such as “which EV has the best range”- you are bringing in more relevant organic traffic. These customers therefore have more buying intent. This means, well basically they are more likely to spend more of their money with you.

However, crucial to this process is keyword research, optimisation of the website and then monitoring CRO see how that be further improved.

Monitoring “time on page” or average dwell times is key, as this basically tells you how long the average shopper is sticking around for.

A business could potentially spend a considerable amount on Google AdWords and organic search engine optimisation, yet not see the sales they had expected.

There could of course be a multitude of reasons for this.

For example, goods could be more expensive than some of the competitor businesses, which is causing customers to go elsewhere.

However, it could also be down to poor web design, slow websites, poor use of CTAs.

Now, by using split testing, it’s possible to convert more organic and paid customers into paying customers. For example, by changing let’s say product descriptions, to a different wording, making perhaps the description more helpful, this can help to generate more sales.

Why is it important to refresh pages and make sure the information is up to date?

Out of date advice is a sure-fire way of increasing the bounce rate.

For example, a shopper reading a page, which sees the buying guide was written 3 years ago, knows that information is no longer relevant.

For example, it could be that someone’s looking to buy an e-bike, they land on that buying guide to find all of the product links are broken, as those pages no longer exist.

This causes a negative user experience.

This is why Google rewards businesses with higher organic rankings when pages are kept up to date. The reason is, Google’s algorithm wants to serve the best answer to a product or service question. Google can only do this if the information is kept up to date. Therefore, businesses should from time to time update the information to offer the best possible advice to the customer.

This is why on some articles you see “first published” date then “last updated” date, this so the content marketing team can keep track of how up to date the information is.

The short answer to this question is a resounding yes, if the bounce rate is sustained and is very high.

However, there is caveat to advice, that is some businesses naturally have higher bounce rates.

For example, in terms of e-commerce SEO, naturally some businesses will have high bounce rates as shoppers look around for the best price.

However, a high bounce rate essentially means that shoppers are leaving in a very short period of time. There only visiting that one single page that they land on.

Now if you sell lets says hundreds of different products, then naturally you would expect the shoppers to shop around and at least browse a few different items.

Therefore, the cause of a high bounce rate needs to be found, often this can achieve through split testing.

A high dwell time or time on page figure indicates that the shopper or the reader is spending longer on that page. This means, that the shopper is more engaged, because of this, Google rewards businesses

Calls to action for those who do not know what this means, are elements of the web design which encourage the visitor to take action.

This could be to sign up to a newsletter, give the company a call, or simply to download a detailed brochure of that product.

This all helps to move that visitor from just being a visitor, to becoming a paying customer.

The calls to action therefore need to be incorporated into the website’s design. For example, a brightly coloured button, could be placed on each page, simply saying “give us a call back”- this is a good example of a call to action. As it could prompt the customer into entering say mobile number, for one of your sales staff to call that customer.

This is sometimes all that is needed, to convert a visitor into a paying customer.

From our personal experience, as running a highly established marketing agency, we have found that by adding embedded YouTube video to a page can help improve dwell times.

For example, a shopper might want to watch a sales assistant explain the benefits of that product through a YouTube video. This is rather than reading a lengthy product description. Therefore, the video could be 3 minutes long, and on average the shopper might watch the entire video therefore increasing the dwell time.

Not only this the sales staff can more clearly convey the benefits of owning that item.

Yes, we have helped e-commerce businesses, as well as many local businesses to increase sales. The main way we do this is through technical, on-page and off-page optimisation. We write very high-quality buying guides, which are very informative for the customer. The information is so clear, so well written, this helps to bring more shoppers onto the product pages, where we can help the business to generate more sales.

There was actually a very large Google algorithm update, which was called the “Google Helpful Content Update”.

What this done was reward businesses which had published helpful content marketing.

The businesses which actually just wrote content marketing just for SEO benefit alone, actually seen their organic rankings decrease.

Therefore, the businesses which publish helpful pages, these are rewarded with higher organic rankings. Not only that, if the page is useful and helpful to the customer, these are the pages which have a higher conversion rate. Therefore, the solution is simple, do not just write for SEO benefit but also write to help the customer.

When the customer can find an answer to their question on the page, there more likely to buy from you.

The websites design plays an important role in determining engagement and sales. For example, take something as simple as the main menu, many businesses can actually have a main menu that’s too complicated.

We are one of the best and most experienced SEO agencies in Cardiff. We work with businesses on a monthly basis to improve their local SEO. The agency is owned and run by Ryan Walsh who is known as one of the best in Wales. Call us on: 029 21 761777 and our team are here to help you.